The historian David Irving was yesterday accused in the high court holocaust libel trial of being a racist. Mr Irving, who is seeking damages over claims that he is a "holocaust denier", rejected the allegation.

The accusation was made during cross-examination of the 62-year-old author of Hitler's War by Richard Rampton QC, defending the American academic, Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books.

Mr Rampton, questioning Mr Irving on his various "utterances both in public and private on the subject of Jews, blacks etc", accused him of teaching his daughter aged nine months a "racist ditty" when he took her out for a walk.

The QC read out a September 1994 extract from Mr Irving's personal diaries in which the historian referred to a poem he had sung to his daughter when "half-breed children" were wheeled past:

The author is suing Professor Lipstadt and Penguin Books over her 1994 book Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, which he says has generated hatred against him.

The defendants, who deny libel, have accused him of being a liar and a falisfier of history.

Mr Rampton also referred to a speech made by Mr Irving in September 1992. The author had said: "For the time being, for a transitional period I'd be prepared to accept that the BBC should have a dinner-jacketed gentleman reading the important news to us, followed by a lady reading all the less important news, followed by Trevor McDonald giving us all the latest news about the muggings and the drug busts ..."

Mr Rampton, who said the rest was lost in laughter and applause, asked Mr Irving: "Are you not appalled by that?" Mr Irving replied: "Not in the least." It was the same kind of speech, he said, which would be given by a stand-up comic at the end of Brighton pier.

The court was shown a video of Mr Irving addressing a meeting of the rightwing American organisation the National Alliance, in Tampa, Florida, in October, 1995, in which he talked of the "leg end" of the holocaust. Mr Rampton said that Mr Irving had spoken at eight National Alliance events between 1990 and 1998.

Mr Irving said that he had no association with the alliance, had no idea what it was and had not attended events which "to his knowledge" had been organised by it.